Theater: Eros Degraded

Baal is Bertolt Brecht's first play, written in 1918, and in later life
he had no illusions about it. Just prior to his death in 1956, he said:
"I admit and I warn youthe play lacks wisdom." What the play has is
wildness, chaos, raw youthful exuberance, an ardent desire to shock,
and a compulsion to spew up nausea in the accents of lyric delirium.
One line sets the tone of the play: "I see the world in a mellow light:
it is the Lord God's excrement."